Ex Cineribus
by siobhane
Summary: Xu has never had any love for Seifer Almasy. So why does his death taste like ash on her tongue? [Phoenix Rising]


_Notes: Technically, this is closely related to Take Me Home, but it's also a stand-alone and it isn't necessary to read its counterpart to understand it._

* * *

His heart stops beating at 23:02 PM. It was her knife that did the job.

Perhaps there's still time to save him, but Xu lifts her fingers from his throat, stands, lights a cigarette, and takes a long, slow drag. She watches smoke coil from the cherry-red circle at the end of the lit paper and tobacco cylinder and in it, she sees serpents and wildfires and bones.

She could save him. Bring him back. Resurrect him. His death is a waste, almost a tragedy, but Xu does not give up her kills or botch missions out of sympathy. Why start now?

Blood is the essence of life, every drop precious. His spills across the pale carpet, a viscous, black stain with shining edges. His essence. His life. Gone.

She rarely regrets a death, especially not the death of a man she loathed so deeply while he lived. For as long as she knew him, she despised him. His handsome face, his arrogance, his talent and potential, the way Quistis still holds herself responsible for his failures. If he were less of a cocky little shit in life, he could have been a real threat, but here he lies in a pool of his own blood, felled by Xu's own hand.

It is now 23:10. Too late to save him. No curative or magic can bring him back now.

What a shame. What a waste.

She turns from the body, extinguishes the cigarette in the bathroom sink and pockets the sodden filter. No one will care who killed him when they find his body in the morning, but Xu does not leave behind traces of herself, even when nothing is at stake.

The bounty she's just earned is of no consequence. She loves money almost as much as she loves killing, but there's something about this that steals away the satisfaction of padding her bank account with more Gil than she can spend in a day. Maybe, it's that he chose this end. Death over captivity. To bleed rather than atone.

He didn't even put up a fight.

But what does it matter? The job is done and there's no sense in lingering.

She rinses her blade in the sink until the water runs clear, wipes it clean on the hem of her dress and then slips it back into the holster on her thigh. Her lipstick is smeared, a reminder of what his mouth felt like, how he tasted of Gyshal liquor and ash and the way he so easily accepted this fate.

That is precisely what bothers her. The Seifer she once knew would never succumb so easily, even if his once toned body was now soft in all the wrong places and his bones were too prominent and sharp under her hands.

The lipstick is evidence. Something she nearly forgot.

It isn't like her to forget the details.

She's wasted enough time thinking about things that don't matter. She won't risk leaving evidence behind.

From the table, she grabs the bottle of cheap liquor and uncaps it. It smells of death and rot and depression and the vapors burn her sinuses. She takes a swallow, then pours the remainder on his corpse, as if offering him one last shot before he meets his maker.

The snap of her lighter, a spark as the flint ignites, and she touches the edge of the flame to his booze soaked shirt. It catches, flares up and consumes him from head to toe. She smells burning hair and urine and melting plastic and she's momentarily fascinated by the shape of him covered in fire.

He could have been something more. Something better. A worthy adversary.

Xu backs out of the room as the carpet catches fire and she gags on the smoke and on a nagging wrongness that brings bile to her throat. There's no satisfaction, no sense of accomplishment to be found here. It was too easy. She didn't take his life, he gave it to her without a fight.

She promised to take him home, one way or another. And she will. In a black bag, his remains so charred, they will have to identify him by his teeth.

Sickened, Xu escapes the hotel room and into the hall, and she avoids the security cameras on the way out, just as she did on the way in. No one will know she was ever here.

Outside, she stands in the pouring rain, across the street and cloaked in darkness, and she watches tongues of flame lick over the curtains in the window of his room. Just a flicker at first, and as the fire alarm cuts through the night, the fabric is engulfed in pulsing orange, like the throb of a heartbeat.

She should leave. It's unwise to linger, even if no one cares that he's dead, but she lights a cigarette and stands beneath an awning to watch the evidence burn.

A shadow passes behind the blaze in the window, the shape of a man, and Xu _knows_.

Of course. Her subconscious could never let it end like this.

At 23:21 PM, as flames danced over his skin, Seifer Almasy's heart fluttered in his chest and his body fed on the blaze. Not yet done with this life.


End file.
